Opinion
THE NEW STRATEGIC
REALITY: MAD IS DEAD
Published: March 11, 1985
| William Safire |
WASHINGTON— The exchange between the
Ukrainian Communist Party boss Vladimir Shcherbitsky and Ronald Reagan in the
Oval Office last week was considerably more spirited than reported.
Mr. Shcherbitsky, a high-ranking Politburo member, was
sent here to test the President's mettle on the eve of the resumption of arms
talks.
Mr. Reagan, as usual, began to ladle out the charm, but
the Soviet leader did not respond with the crabbed stolidity of a Gromyko:
instead, Mr. Shcherbitsky had been instructed to cut through the small talk
with a harsh threat about the huge buildup and cold war in store if the U.S.
pursued its new space- defense strategy.
The President's memoirs will draw on a memcon that shows
how the charm ladle was promptly set aside. Mr. Reagan jabbed back, and Mr.
Shcherbitsky renewed the verbal attack, insisting that the Russian people would
not permit this new threat. Mr. Reagan replied sharply to the effect that ''the
people in the Soviet Union don't have much to say about what their Government
does.'' The Kremlin likes to measure American leaders by shaking them up.
President Kennedy responded too mildly to the verbal testing by Khrushchev in
Vienna in the early 60's, which led to a mistaken judgment and the Cuban
missile crisis. A decade later, President Nixon responded icily to the furious
initial bombast of Brezhnev in his dacha outside Moscow, which led to a
realistic Russian assessment and a period of detente. Mr. Shcherbitsky has
undoubtedly reported to the Sanhedrin of decrepitude composing the Politburo
that Mr. Reagan, when pushed hard, pushes back hard. The President, after the
meeting, was troubled by the Ukrainian's tough gambit and wondered whether he
had been wise to let Mr. Shcherbitsky get his dander up. Secretary of State
Shultz assured Mr. Reagan that his natural response was on target: It had been
important to signal the Russians that intimidation would not work, and for good
measure, ''this is not the sort of talk they ever get to hear.''
The Shcherbitsky report will be useful to the Kremlin,
because the arms- control negotiations (ACNE) resuming in Geneva this week are
based on a new reality. The decade that led to the Russian superiority in
offensive missiles and in battle-management radar protection of those missiles
has ended; the decade of defense has begun.
Many Americans resist that reality. Some with silly scorn
at ''Star Wars,'' others with reasoned argument against the abandonment of
Mutual Assured Destruction deterrence theory, hold that Mr. Reagan's new
approach threatens the Russians by removing their ability to retaliate if we
launch a first strike.
The serious objections have weight. But the President's
proposal to build up defense and reduce offense has an intellectual
underpinning, and has the added weight of an election. The President's judgment
is challengeable, and his budgeting is debatable, but in the end most Americans
acknowledge he has been elected to be responsible for nuclear strategy. MAD is
dead. It started to die exactly two years ago, in March of 1983, when Mr.
Reagan first proposed to leapfrog the Soviet Union's offensive advantage; the
old, naked-to-mine- enemy deterrence made rattling sounds in the campaign, when
Mr. Mondale supported it in televised debate; the old theory died forever with
Mr. Reagan's landslide re-election. The new idea made possible by technology - a defense shield to protect
most of us against incoming missiles - is now unstoppable. It protects both
superpowers against the greatest immediate nuclear danger, from a terrorist
nation armed with bomb and missile and no concern for retaliation, as there
will surely be soon. Because it will no longer depend on the sanity of
dictators or the kindness of strangers, it returns defense to the hands of the
defender. This galls the Russian leaders, who spent 20 years catching and
passing the Americans in nuclear offensive power. Strategic dominance was in
sight; now here they are, either obliged to compete in an expensive
space-defense race, or forced to settle for permanent nuclear equality.
No wonder they bluster and glower at the new reality.
They will try, for a time, to preserve their land-missile advantage, railing
against the sea- change in nuclear strategy, for no nation resists change like
the U.S.S.R.
One day, not soon, they will deal with reality. We will
recall then what Mr. Reagan said dryly to Mr. Shcherbitsky, as they parted: ''I
hope the negotiators do better than we did.''
****
From Wikipedia:
SDI
and MAD
SDI was
criticized for potentially disrupting the strategic doctrine of Mutual assured
destruction. MAD postulated that intentional nuclear attack was
inhibited by the certainty of ensuing mutual destruction. Even if a nuclear
first strike destroyed many of the opponent's weapons, sufficient nuclear
missiles would survive to render a devastating counter-strike against the
attacker. The criticism was that SDI could have potentially allowed an attacker
to survive the lighter counter-strike, thus encouraging a first strike by the
side having SDI. Another destabilizing scenario was countries being tempted to
strike first before SDI was deployed, thereby avoiding a disadvantaged nuclear
posture. Proponents of SDI argued that SDI development might instead cause the
side that did not have the resources to develop SDI, too, rather than launching
a suicidal nuclear first strike attack before the SDI system was deployed,
instead come to the bargaining table with the country that did have those
resources, and, hopefully, agree to a real, sincere disarmament pact that would
drastically decrease all forces, both nuclear and conventional.[citation
needed] Furthermore,
the MAD argument was criticized on the grounds that MAD only covered
intentional, full-scale nuclear attacks by a rational, non-suicidal opponent
with similar values. It did not take into account limited launches, accidental
launches, rogue launches, or launches by non-state entities or covert proxies.
